Hydrogen Fuel Cell Characterization and Use in Hybrid Drone System

Copter drone use has been a steady increase over the last couple of decades.The main obstacle that has slowed down the widespread use of these systems has been their limited flight time.This poster will focus on showing the results for the characterization of a hybrid system which includes a hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) along with a battery in a hex-copter drone configuration to determine its effectiveness.The reason for the use of hydrogen relies on the fact that it has a higher energy density (120 kJ/g) than commercial lithium-ion polymer batteries (LiPo), the type of batteries most civilian drones currently use, which only have an energy density of 1 kJ/g.In order to test the HFC, a testing setup composed of lightbulbs was created in order to determine the fuel cell power output and its interactions with the battery system.The data used for the analysis of the performance of the drone was the power drawn over the duration of each test.The results show a delay of less than 1 second between the transition from the fuel cell power to battery power.Additionally, it was found that both fuel cell and battery supplied energy at the same time, but the latter was almost negligible.However, the battery effectively supplied the drone with almost the same amount of power as the fuel cell when hydrogen was exhausted.Finally, it was found that the battery system plays an important role when the fuel cell is being turned on or off.